The stories on this page should help you navigate and contribute to this website.
If you have trouble, help is available. We'd rather help with a small problem than deal with a huge mess, so don't hesitate to get in touch if you need help. techsupport@dumontpressgraphix.ca
And if something doesn't work the way we say it will, that's probably our fault - so do let us know.
Check out each of the menu items in the red (or orange) bar near the top of the page.
Many pages of this site show you a list of stories - with the title, a photo if there is one, a short excerpt from the text, and a link so you can Read this story. We do this so you can see more of the content on a page, not just the first story.
Once you click the Read this story link, you're taken to the Profile page of the story's author. You can see the whole story along with any photos or documents attached to it. You can also add a comment in the right-hand column.
If the story is yours, and you're logged in, there is a three-dot icon like this
in the top right, under the story's dates. You click that icon to edit the story or to add or arrange photos or documents.In order to add your stories, photos or comments, we need to know who you are. We want to make sure content is being added by people who were really there.
Click the Sign Up button at the right end of the orange navigation bar. The form is pretty simple. You have to fill in all the fields; the form will warn you if you forget something.
Now Log In
Now you can log in by clicking the Login link at the right end of the navigation bar. The site will display your name on the left, just below the navigation bar.
We promise we won't share your information with anyone unless they take us to court and force us to.
Once you sign up, you'll be shown on the Contributors page. But your entry will say "I haven't uploaded my photo yet."
Cick on your name or the blue photo block to go to your profile page. If you've logged in, you'll be able to click one of the buttons below the photo block to manage your page.
In the Profile form, you can correct your name if you made a mistake entering it. In the Location field, tell us where you're living now.
And please do upload a photo.
Your profile should be a snapshot description of yourself. You can talk about how you were connected to Dumont Press Graphix back in the day. Or if you connected with the community before DPG got off the ground, or years later, that's fine too.
We'd like to know (briefly) what you've been doing for the past 50 years, and what you're up to now.
Click the Save the Changes button when you're done.
You can come back later and change your profile, or change your photo.
In the Profile form, you can correct your name if you made a mistake entering it. In the Location field, tell us where you're living now.
And please do upload a photo.
Your profile should be a snapshot description of yourself. You can talk about how you were connected to Dumont Press Graphix back in the day. Or if you connected with the community before DPG got off the ground, or years later, that's fine too.
We'd like to know (briefly) what you've been doing for the past 50 years, and what you're up to now.
Click the Save the Changes button when you're done.
You can come back later and change your profile, or change your photo.
Click the
button below your profile photo. Once you've saved your story (and provided you're logged in) you edit it by clicking the three-dot menu in the upper right of the full story display.Every item of content on this site is contained in a story. Many stories contain text; some of them contain a great deal of text. But a story doesn't have to include any text; if you want to add a photo, you create a story and add the photo to it. Of course, it might be a good idea to include some background info about the photo.
Every story has to have a title, so we can keep track of it. And every story you contribute has your name on it.
You can edit your stories as many times as you like. Nothing is carved in stone.
You can type your story directly into the text box or you can compose it somewhere else and paste it into the text box.
If you compose your story somewhere else, please don't add any formatting beyond bold, italic and underline. Do not set fonts, colours or text sizes - they will really mess things up when you paste onto this website.
Also, this site spaces paragraphs a comfortable distance apart, so don't put extra carriage returns between paragraphs.
We intend to add an Autosave feature to the editor in the near future, but it isn't present yet. So please save your work every 10 minutes or so.
When you add or edit a story, you have the option of attaching a tag to it. Tags are topics and they're listed - kind of like a mini-index - in the right column of the Home page and some other pages.
Putting a tag on your story will help other people find it and let it be grouped with other stories on the same topic. Click in the checkbox beside the tag you want to add to your story; you can use more that one tag if that fits. You can change your mind and remove a tag later if you like.
If your story doesn't fit with any of the existing tags, you can add a new tag to the system. But please be sparing about adding new tags - too many tags is as bad as none at all. Above all, please don't use a person's name as a tag. There will be a search function on the site soon, and it will be able to find stories that contain a person's name.
Tech Support
This site uses an editor that behaves very much like a word processor. But we've limited the kinds of formatting you can do, to keep things looking fairly consistent throughout the site.
The big difference from a word processor is that in order to change formatting, you have to remove any existing formats you've applied. To do that, highlight the text you want to unformat and choose Format -> Clear formatting from the menu.
Clear formatting is at the bottom of the Format menu. We'll try to get it into a better place soon.
The editor will let you insert sub-headings into a story. Headings can only be applied to a paragraph, not to a block of highlighted text. The toolbar button that says Not a Heading is where you'll find heading styles.
If you want to apply one of the Text styles from the toolbar button, you have to highlight the text you want to format.
This site spaces paragraphs automatically. So you don't have to put an extra line between paragraphs - the site will do that for you.
See, I didn't need to put an extra carriage return after the last paragraph. The site inserts the necessary space between paragraphs.
Therefore, if you want to compose your content in Word and copy it onto this site, that's just fine, but please don't put extra lines between paragraphs. When you paste your content into this editor, the paragraphs will be properly spaced.
The link button in the editor is at the left of the second row of buttons. It looks like (surprise!) a couple of links.
To insert a link, follow these steps:
Once you've saved your story, be sure to check your link and make sure it works.
Go in to Edit the Story; right click on the link and choose Remove link.
This screen works best if you can see the whole thing - so if you can see the dark border at the bottom of the form. Zoom your browser out if you can't see the bottom of the form.
With all these operations, You have to click Save This Layout or your arrangment won't be saved.
This form lets you put your stories in the order you want. Just drag and drop the stories to arrange them in order.
You can also hide a story or remove it from your page. If a story is hidden, it won't show up on your page, but you can unhide it later. This is handy if you're working on a story but are not yet happy with it. Hide it until you can get it finished.
To remove a story from your page, click the Take Off button. You can add a story back later if you change your mind..
To add a story back to your page, drag it from the left column to the right and place it in the order you want.
In the screen's left column, the Display button below the story title will show you the story - in case you don't remember what it is or how it looks.
From the 3-dot menu on your story, you can add photos or scanned documents. Adding and arraging Documents works the same as photos, so we'll just talk about photos here.
You don't have to worry about the size of photos you upload - the site takes care of reducing them to a manageable size and making a thumbnail of each one. However, if your Internet connection is dodgy, or your photo is really huge, you might have trouble uploading it. Any size up to about 4 MB should be okay.
The Add or Arrange Photos page has 2 parts. In the top section, you add photos to your story. You can add just one or several photos at the same time. Once you've added them, the bottom section of the page let's you drag and drop them to arrange them in the order you want.
You can't use both sections of the page at the same time. So either add phtos and save them, or arrange them and save the arrangement.
If your story is very short, and mostly a vehicle to display photos, they'll be shown at the end of the story. If there are more than 4 photos, they'll be arranged in a sliding carousel. But if you want your photos to be distributed throughout your story, that's not hard to do.
Wherever you want a photo to appear, put this code
Here's an example from a story on this page:
On this form you can set a title for your photo
You have to put in the code exactly as it is here - square brackets, no caps, no spaces. Don't put a space after it. Don't put the code on its own line - just stick it into the text. Most of the time, you'll want your photo to be at the beginning of a paragraph, because the layout will be happiest that way.
When your story is displayed, the system will take your photos in the order you have them in the Arrange Photos form. And it will display them as you've chosen with the Edit Photo Properties form for each photo. See the Edit Photo Properties story on this page for more info.
On this form you can set a title for your photo as well as a caption. Website accessibility standards also decree you should have text (or alt-text) on the image for the benefit of visually-impared people.
The Layout section of the form lets you choose a size for the photo and to put it at the left of the story text, at the right, or in the centre. The first image in this story is set to wide and centred - which is often a good way to have the first photo in a story.
When photos are displayed in a carousel, these settings have no effect. But when a photo is displayed within a story, the choices you make here will affect the way the photo shows up. You can experiment with the settings to see how your photo looks best.
The pop-up option tells whether a larger version of the photo will pop up when the photo is clicked. Most of the time, you'll want this option set to Yes.
If you are the owner of this photo (if you're the one who uploaded it) the Archival Info is also available. This information may help people find your photo in a search, or provide valuable information for future historians.
Here is a document with some information you may find useful. It's about how to pick up messages to another email address (that is, not a gmail.com address) from Gmail.
This story is mostly so I can check out how Documents work with Stories.
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